Mark Keller in 1977 with the Hagaddah
Following up on a previous post about Mark Keller’s photo album, we are pleased to announce that all photos have been digitized and made available for the public.
As part of the Mark Keller Papers, donated to the Center of Alcohol Studies (CAS) by his daughter, Ita N. Wiener, the professionally designed large photo album contains nearly one hundred colorful snapshots taken at various moments at an unorthodox event, Keller’s Recognition Dinner held on October 7, 1977 in the Fiddler’s Elbow Country Club, Lamington, NJ (a part of Bedminster township).
Recognition
It wasn’t called a “retirement party” for a reason. Chaired by R. Brinkley Smithers, a major benefactor of CAS on behalf of the Christopher D. Smithers Foundation, the event was a spectacular demonstration of appreciation and support from various scholarly, government, and other organizations from all over the world, such as the Addiction Research Foundation, the Jellinek Memorial Fund, the National Council on Alcoholism, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the International Council on Alcohol and Addiction. The impressive list of attendees is not to be shared in public, as it contains contact information for all the illustrious guests.
Celebrities
Now online, the pictures in the album provide a glimpse into the assortment of celebrities in alcohol studies in the 20th century, confirming Selden Bacon’s description of Mark Keller as the “scholars’ scholar” in his article on Mark Keller’s retirement published in JSA in the same year.
In addition to the many candid shots taken by expert photographers, the album also documents the official award ceremony. Mark Keller was awarded the Jellinek Memorial Prize, the highest honor an alcohol researcher can be awarded, in the category “Documentation: for his outstanding contributions to the documentation of the alcohol literature.”
Anthony Carpenter, Marty Mann, Mark Keller raising the “Bunky,” and Brinkley Smithers
The the “lady in red”
Mark Keller showing off the ”Bunky” to Jellinek’s daughter, Ruth Jellinek Surry
Among the pictures, the “lady in red” catches attention here and there. She is none other than Ruth Jellinek Surry, E. M. Jellinek’s daughter, as we earlier wrote about A Picture of Keller, the Bunky, and Bunky’s Daughter, featuring Keller with “the Bunky,” i.e., Jellinek’s bust, which also presented to the awardee, along with the cash prize, as part of the Jellinek Memorial Award.
Browse the album
- Browse the 26 pages of the album and the pictures scanned separately
The album itself is a piece of art, well worth cherishing and preserving. Aware of the fragile photos glued to the pages and covered with transparent plastic sleeves, the challenge to digitize them wasn’t as big as I first thought. In addition to scanning the ones already that got loose over times, we tried to scan entire pages without removing the images or the sleeves. It was a long shot, but with some creative use of the flatbed scanner, it worked! The result is 26 scanned pages, two with a single, large image, and 22 with four images on each page, a total of 98 color images presenting alcohol studies scholars and friends from all over the world with captions identifying the people in the pictures.
